In digital broadband broadcast networks, mobile terminals receiving a broadcast must perform handover operations when moving from one cell to another in order to ensure uninterrupted reception of digital content. Handover decisions for mobile terminals may be made using information about adjacent cells. This information may be derived from multiple sources, including signal quality measurements of handover candidate cell signals.
One conventional approach to making handover measurements is to measure the signal strengths of adjacent cells at regular intervals of time. This may potentially waste processing time and may especially waste valuable power used by a radio in the mobile terminal. For example, a mobile terminal may move very slowly through a cell, or even remain stationary for a long period of time. In this situation, scanning repeatedly for nearby cells would be completely unnecessary and wasteful.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for handover procedures and systems which selectively and sparingly make handover measurements, saving power and processing time within a mobile terminal.